My
little sisters knew who Charlie Chaplin was at 8. I made sure of it. I force
every one of my classes to sit through at least one scene from his films every
semester that I work as a film professor. I have reviewed each of the previous
Chaplin releases on Criterion (The GoldRush, Modern Times, City Lights, The Great Dictator and MonsieurVerdoux) with increased admiration and endless gushing. At the same time, I
am aware that there are still many who are unfamiliar with the breadth of his
work, in particular the significance of Limelight.
The only comparison that I can think to make is to Birdman. Both films are about aging actors taking their last chance
at lasting fame in the arena of theater, and both starred actors who seemed to
be playing characters who increase in significance the more familiar you are
with their previous filmography. Michael Keaton’s prior performance as Batman
adds a layer of relevance to his performance in Birdman, as does Chaplin’s iconic role as The Tramp to his
performance in Limelight.

Leo
McCarey’s familial melodrama, Make Way
for Tomorrow, is deceptively simplistic in story and screenplay. The
narrative, however, contains much more than plot; we are exposed to every
expression, every reaction shot, with a precision in filmmaking that McCarey
carried over from his years of experience in early comedic cinema. Famous for
having made the reaction shot a commonplace element in the slapstick of Our
Gang and Laurel & Hardy shorts, McCarey achieves just as much success with
pathos in the close-ups and deliberate framing of his drama. McCarey
understands that body language and subtle expressions are universally helpful
in the language of cinema, affecting the audience’s emotional response with
both laughter and tears. Make Way for
Tomorrow has both, but neither feels contrived; the audience is brought
into the story by the demand to participate in the reading of facial
expressions, so that the emotional investment is our own. This is the sincerest
form of filmmaking, as McCarey trusts his audiences enough to allow them their
own personal involvement in the unfolding of the narrative.

These Final Hours is a small Australian
pre-apocalyptic thriller with a plot that sounds similar to dozens of movies
with much higher budgets. Just reading the film’s description made me feel as
though I had already watched it, and anticipated no surprises in its viewing.
While I was correct in assuming that the plot would be fairly predictable, the
surprise came in how engaged I became with this slightly derivative narrative,
mostly due to the strengths in its leading performers and a capable director.

Artists
tend to be inherently eccentric, which is why documentaries and biopics about
their lives are often as engaging as the art itself. While this certainly holds
true of Al Carbee, whose bizarre art involving a menagerie of discarded Barbie
dolls is matched only by the quirky personality of the artist himself,
filmmaker Jeremy Workman seems to be constructing a biography which is mostly
rooted in his own personal relationships with the man. Though there is some
value in Carbee’s friendship with Workman, specifically because he doesn’t
appear to have many other loyal friends in his life, this alone is not quite
enough content to fill up a feature film. Even within the first five minutes of
the documentary, Workman (who edited Magical
Universe, as well as producing and directing) re-uses the same footage
twice, which is an instant red flag that the content has been stretched too
thin.

A lot of independent films are born out of a
singularly unique good idea, but fail in the management of the execution. This
can happen with poor performances from amateur actors, technical inadequacy in
the form of bad cinematography and poor sound, or a screenplay with dialogue
that is heavily in need of a rewrite. Surprisingly, all of these elements are
effectively carried out within the narrative of The Sleepwalker; all of the leads give consistently solid
performances, the film looks and sounds great, and little of the dialogue made
me cringe. The problem doesn’t come from the execution, but instead what feels
like an incomplete concept for the film itself. Whatever point or end result
that filmmaker Mona Fastvold may have been hoping the audience would be left
with somehow gets lost. The Sleepwalker
is excellently executed but ends up feeling like an empty shell. With all of
the effort to crack this nut, it will likely leave audiences feeling frustratingly
unnourished.

The Human Centipede was shocking in
concept alone, not to mention filmmaker Tom Six’s unflinching approach to the
actual acts. It arrived at the tail end of an era of torture porn horror
films, including the final entry of the Saw
franchise a mere six months later, but took the genre in a new direction
with the inclusion of a mad-scientist angle. Dieter Laser chewed the scenery as
Dr. Heiter, carrying out an experiment that Six still insists to be 100% medically
accurate.

I am
neither sexually frustrated nor artistically ignorant enough to ever find
reason to read the pathetically popular fan-fiction book franchise written by
E.L. James on her blackberry. Having already endured all four of the Twilight books, I understand the appeal
of poorly written soap opera drama (though the reading of those books ensured
my disinterest in their film adaptations), and approached the viewing of Sam
Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey
with a harsh bias and eagerness to write a ruthlessly unfavorable review. While
the story itself is as unsatisfactory as I had expected, the characters poorly
developed, the situations contrived and unbelievable, the dialogue comically
stupid, and the chemistry more forced than a film with Robert Pattinson as the
lead, Fifty Shades of Grey is far
from the worst film I have seen this year. It wasn’t even the worst film I
watched this week.

For an
entertaining horror film, you need a clever concept and creative execution.
While The Drownsman seems born out of
a unique idea, the way in which the plot unfolds is never convincing due to the
filmmaker’s inability to think through the various elements. The end result
feels like an uneven collection of contrived moments borrowed from better
films, along with generic performances from the bevy of attractive and
unconvincing co-ed cast members. All of this would make little difference if
the horror aspects of the film worked, but rules change from scene to scene and
the film is as void of logic as it is decent supporting cast members.